Saturday, December 4, 2010

In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it, and decided it must be the butchered remains of X. The way her body had been strewn over a wide area presumably encouraged speculation that parts of her had been found at the Royal Navy victualling yard in Deptford, which was a large facility which included stores, a bakery and an abattoir.
"X" became slang for mutton or stew and then for anything worthless — from which comes the current use of "_____ X" to mean "nothing at all". It can be seen as a euphemism for "fuck all" – which means the same.
This is not the only example of Royal Navy slang relating to unpopular rations: even today, tins of steak and kidney pudding are known as "baby's head". The large tins the mutton was delivered in were reused as mess tins. Mess tins or cooking pots are still known as X.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Sunday, October 10, 2010

The name Y, is based on the fact that, when the X was made, getting involved in ______ was a taboo, so Z advised his artists to tell others, that they were working in the _________ of one 'X'.
(X is blanked out in the pic)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

These are the questions compiled for India quiz prelims @ Festember X. The questions are intended to be mass and junta. The cut off for the finals was around 20. For questions from the finals click here.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

X alias Y was born circa 1725 in the village of Panaiyur, in Rammnad 'country' in a Hindu farming family of the Pillai Vellala caste. Being too restless in his youth, he left his native village, and converted to Islam. During his days at Tanjore, an English Captain named Brunton educated Y, making him a learned man well-versed in several languages.

From Tanjore he moved to Nellore (in present day Andhra Pradesh), to try his hand as a native physician under Mohammed Kamal, in addition to his career in the army. He moved up the ranks as Thandalgar (tax collector), Havildar and finally as a Subedar and that is how he is referred to in the English records ('Nellore Subedar' or just 'Nellore'). While staying in Arcot he fell in love with a 'Portuguese' Christian (a loose term for a person of mixed Indo-European descent) girl named Maasa, and married her.

He aided Chanda sahib in his siege at Rockfort-Tiruchirapalli against Muhammed Ali Khan Wallajah and the British forces, for the throne of Arcot.Robert Clive( a British commander) , impressed by the charges Y led against the battlements of Arcot, recruited him — and Y put his Nellore sepoys and cavalry at the disposal of the English. Under Major Stringer Lawrence, Y was trained in the European method of warfare and his natural talent in military tactics and strategy blossomed to its full potential.

Over the next decade, as the Company fought the French in the Wars of the Carnatic, it was Y guerrilla tactics, repeatedly cutting the French lines of supply, that did the French in, particularly during Lally's siege of Madras in 1758. Lally was to later describe the role of the Nellore Subedar's sepoys in these words: "They were like flies, no sooner beat off from one part, they came from another."

By 1760 Y had reached the zenith of his career as the 'all-conquering' military commandant. (A few years earlier he had been given the rank of 'Commandant of Company's sepoys'). His greatest supporter during this period was George Pigot, the English governor in Madras. Y was held in very high esteem even after his death by the English and in their opinion he was one of the two great military geniuses India had ever produced; the other being Hyder Ali of Mysore. Y was regarded for his strategy and Hyder Ali for his speed. Major General Sir. John Malcolm said of him almost a fifty years later,"Y was by far the bravest and ablest of all the native soldiers ever to serve the English in India".

The architect of the X is Kalyanam Iyengar and was the brain behind the idea of making the name synonymous with ________. He was the uncrowned monarch who had several hundreds of men working in his 'kingdom'. An embodiment of virtues and humility, he was named Kalyanam Iyengar by the great politician wizard Rajaji because he donated the Thali – the wedding chain and wedding clothes to the needy. A philanthropist, he championed the cause of the poor and downtrodden. A connoisseur and patron of fine arts, he introduced music and dance festivals in ________ which is being followed till date. He passed on the mantle to his son, brother and brother-in-law. His centenary, which fell on March 2009, was celebrated in a grand manner.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

X’s(the guy with the sword) image was used in several pamphlets circulated by various Agorakshanasabh (“cow protection leagues”) and “wandering ascetics” as a protest against the Muslim practice of beef-eating during the British raj. These pamphlets were produced in a time when Hindu-Muslim riots over cow slaughter occurred in several areas of India. They portrayed X raising a sword above the head of a sacred cow, whose body was illustrated to be a microcosmic paradise in which all the Hindu gods resided.

__________ de Albuquerque(the guy in the pic)(1453 – December 16, 1515) was a Portuguese nobleman, a naval general officer whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian ocean. He is generally considered a world conquest military genius. He was responsible for building numerous fortresses to defend key points that he was taking and established a net of diplomatic relations. Shortly before his death he was awarded viceroy and "Duke of Goa" by king Manuel I of Portugal, being the first Portuguese duke not from the royal family, and the first Portuguese title landed overseas.

Despite his fame, the city of Albuquerque in New Mexico is not named after him. It was named after a Spanish Viceroy of Mexico named Don Francisco Fernández de la Cueva, who also held the title Duke of Alburquerque. There is, however, a town near the Spanish-Portuguese border named Alburquerque which may be the root of both names.

However he is immortalized in the form of something else which he used to bring on his journeys to Goa......what?
or
Id the blank.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

X aka Y gave a faked press conference at the White House gates on 29 September 2006, just one day before an official visit of Z's president. The Z government hired two Western public relations firms to counter Y's claims, running a four-page advertisement in The New York Times implicitly rebutting many of the claims made by Y.
Z has since changed their strategy by playing along, going so far as inviting Y to visit Z.

Johnny Depp, George Clooney and Steve Martin, all of whom are huge fans of X, contacted him about having a cameo in the movie. But X refused because it would have ruined some of the gags if they knew what was going on.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

In printing, a X was a printing plate cast from movable type. When letters were set one at a time, it made sense to cast a phrase used repeatedly as a single slug of metal. X came to mean such a ready-made phrase. The French word X comes from the sound made when the matrix is dropped into molten metal to make a printing plate.

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Monday, August 30, 2010

Woman in the Moon (or in original German, Frau im Mond) is a science fiction silent film that premiered October 15, 1929. It is often considered to be one of the first "serious" science fiction films.
The basics of rocket travel are presented to a mass audience for the first time by this film, including the use of a multi-stage rocket. The idea that the moon rocket Friede would be submerged in water before launch was a bad guess, although large rockets are launched over water to prevent damage to the spacecraft from the sound generated by liftoff. NASA did, however, have proposals for water-launched rockets (the Sea Dragon and Nova). Also, the first thing the space travelers do upon reaching the moon is use a dowsing rod to search for water.

However what is the movie's biggest contribution to the world of rocket science?

Friday, August 27, 2010

The party plan is largely regarded as primarily the invention of Brownie Wise, who developed it for the X company in the early 1950s. The success of X was widely emulated. In this system, full-time commissioned representatives of the sales organization, almost invariably women, approach other women about hosting a social event in their homes during which a product will be demonstrated. In consideration, they will be given hostess gifts and a portion of the proceeds from the amount of goods sold. Frequently all in attendance will be given a token item of nominal value as an incentive to attend, although the primary reason to attend is for the fun of the social environment. The value of fun as a commodity coupled with personal customer service is what makes this business model so successful.

But recently this kind of marketing reappeared in the news when Y used it promote its newly lauched product Z in 2009.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Friday, August 20, 2010

The term originated from a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California, United States in 1971.The teens would meet after school at a certain time to smoke marijuana at the Louis Pasteur statue.

According to an April 2009 article on the The Huffington Post, the group called itself the Waldos because its members hung out by a wall after school. Writer Ryan Grim, citing interviews with anonymous Waldos, claims that the group met by the statue at X to begin a search for a crop of unguarded cannabis growing near Point Reyes that they had heard about. They never found the stash, Grim writes, but smoked plenty of marijuana while looking for it.

Friday, July 16, 2010

"X"ing is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a web link that they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true destination of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "X"-ed. The song may have been favored for this use by those regarding it as the worst popular song of all time. "X"ing has extended beyond Web links to playing the video or song disruptively in other situations, including public places; this culminated when the song made a surprise appearance in the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a televised event with tens of millions of viewers.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

After a 45 day schedule in the United States, X, the director and the team returned to India to film a couple of scenes in the climax.The team then visited several other countries to shoot a song in the film.During the shooting in Paris the death of Princess Diana had taken place and shooting was delayed in the France, due to her death. For the most part, the film Y was surrounded by world events of all sorts and for X, the cast and crew of the film described the experiences as "tremendously vivid and memorable". Three week prior to the release of the film, on 1 April 1998 a screening was held labeled the Making of Y with prominent personalities invited, however the short film showed the real manufacture of Y. The prank was claimed by X and his crew who utilized an April Fools joke

To become tiny as the atom or transform himself into an atom(Anima).To become big in unshakable proportions (Mahima).To become as light as vapor in levitation (Laghima).To become as heavy as the mountain (Garima).To enter into other bodies by transmigration (Prapti).To be in all things or being omni-pervasive (Prakamya).To be lord of all creation or being omnipotent (Isatvam).To be everywhere or being omnipresent (Vasitvam).

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

During the colonial days, British steamers regularly plied between London and various far flung out posts of the Empire. Journeys on these steamers took anywhere from a week to 3 months. Due to prevailing tides and wind conditions on the high seas, passengers preferred a cabin on the port side of a ship, when heading out of Britain, and the starboard when heading home. Hence passengers who could afford it paid higher fares for these cabins. Hence the rich and moneyed were able to secure the best cabins on a voyage for themselves. This has given rise to a term which is usually associated with the rich and fashionable.What is it?

Saturday, June 26, 2010

________ is a method of carving, or an object such as an engraved gem, item of jewellery or vessel made in this manner. It nearly always features a raised (positive) relief image; contrast with intaglio, which has a negative image. Originally, and still in discussing historical work, _________ only referred to works where the relief image was of a contrasting colour to the background; this was achieved by carefully carving a piece of material with a flat plane where two contrasting colours met, removing all the first colour except for the image to leave a contrasting background.

However, today the word is used more frequently in a different way altogether.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Band X was started by Y, an engineer at Polaroid with a BS and MS in Mech. Engg from MIT. Known for being an obsessive perfectionist, Y and X have released only 5 studio albums, but have sold over 50 million records globally. X held the record for the best selling debut till it was upstaged by GnR's Appetite for Destruction, 17 m copies. X remains to date a classic rock staple. X's eponymous debut was fully home produced by Y, despite pressure from the studio, only the vocals being added later by Brad Delp. However, the usual conflicts ensued, today, Y is the only member of the original lineup left. X had members from the same city where Y studied, frawn from both sides of the river.

The ongoing conflicts between the surviving band members spilled over to the 2008 Presidential campaign. A former band member appeared with Mike Huckabee and played with him at some rallies in New Hampshire. Huckabee used Z as a campaign theme song.

Y, a self-described "Obama supporter", sent an open letter to Huckabee in February 2008 stating that the band had never endorsed any candidate, and that he had never authorized the use of Z as Huckabee's theme song. Y made a point of saying that ONLY he actually played all the guitars on Z as well as most of Xs songs. Huckabee did stop using Z as a theme song.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Sunday, June 13, 2010

This band is said to have derived its name from the legendary lost city of X, the city of the moon, built by an ancient Egyptian civilization, 2000 years ago in the Wilbur Smith novel, Sunbird.Another possible source is the 'Beautiful' Feast of X (or X Festival), an Ancient Egyptian festival which was celebrated annually in Thebes, an ancient city in Egypt.

Friday, June 4, 2010

David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen have always had a tempestuous relationship. Roth was the original lead singer of Van Halen, until he was replaced by Sammy Hagar in 1985. Roth then went on to release a solo album "Eat up and Smile". However in the album, he made several uncharitable references to Van Halen and his replacement. Eddie Van Halen maintained a studious silence until he releases the Band's next offering OU812,which silenced Roth once and for all. What was so significant about this album?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Saturday, April 10, 2010

The name has its origins in a Test match played between the West Indies and England at Old Trafford, Manchester, in the year 1933. According to folklore, Elliss "Puss" Achong is said to have had Walter Robbins stumped off a surprise delivery that spun into the right hander from outside the off stump. As he walked back to the pavilion, Robbins said to his teammates "Fancy being done by a bloody ________", leading to the popularity of the term in England, and subsequently, in the rest of the world.
What?

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

The ending of the ______ fight remains one of the most controversial in boxing history. Midway through the first round, Y fell to the canvas, in what many have argued was not a legitimate knockdown.The Referee appeared confused after X refused to retreat to a neutral corner. Instead, X stood over his fallen opponent, gesturing and yelling at him, "Get up and fight, sucker!"The blow that ended the match became known as "the phantom punch," so named because most people at ringside did not see it. Even X was unsure as to whether or not the punch connected, Replays show X connecting with a quick, chopping right to Y's head as Y was moving toward him. However, whether the blow was a genuine knockout punch remains inconclusive.

Abraham was ordered by God to leave his wife Hagar and his infant son Ishmael alone in the desert. While he was gone, the child became thirsty, and Hagar ran back and forth seven times between the hills of Minar and Sawahf searching for water for her son. The baby cried and hit the ground with his foot (some versions of the story say that an angel scraped his foot or the tip of his wing along the ground), and water miraculously sprang forth.

Saturday, April 3, 2010

In 2002, X was ranked 92nd in Channel 4's list of 100 Greatest Sporting Moments in British television.
As the ball travels towards Y, the ____________ starts to drift to the right (due to the Magnus effect). Z , on the reaction of Y : "He looked as though someone had just nicked his lunch.", as Y was much-mocked for his rotundness. And again Z added "If it had been a cheese roll, it would never have got past him."
In 2009 the Irish chamber pop group ___________ wrote a song called "Jiggery Pokery" about this incident.

what is the X we are talking about?
The blanks and the variables are all different and are there just make it a bit more tougher.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Thursday, March 18, 2010

This was possibly the first-ever India-specific marketing campaign. Put together in 1939 by Harvey Duncan of Lintas, the campaign ensured that the palm tree logo became familiar across the country.The campaign also featured innovative packaging - a square 10-pound tin, a round 5-pound tin and a special 1/4 pound tin for sampling, all in a distinctive green-and-yellow combination. For which venerable Indian product was this campaign launched?

2. How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
_______________________________!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d;

3. In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men – would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and _____ _______ ____ _________. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’”

4. The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow’r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike th’inevitable hour.
The _____ ____ _____ lead but to the grave.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Max registered this website after seeing a trailer of a Sean Connery film in which he says "_______________________________" phrase.This is now a popular online community centered on the creation of single image slide shows on hosted web pages.Most of X's are meant to expose or reflect the more inane facets of pop culture.

(Sort of a peter from another site, but thought id post it here and the question is framed differently.)

Later, when Commander Cardigan learnt of what was expected of the troop, he questioned the sanity of the order as conveyed to him by Lucan,"… allow me to point out to you that there is a battery in front, battery on each flank, and the ground is covered with Russian riflemen."

"I know it." Said Lucan. "But Lord Raglan will have it. We have no choice but to obey."

Whatever followed was a symbol of warfare at both its most courageous and its most tragic. What is it?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Sri Lankan mothers frightened their children with the X bogeyman, and to this day a particularly cunning person is referred to as an X.
The word 'X', meaning 'streetsmart',entered the Tamil language and is widely used in the inner parts of tamilnadu.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

The Division Bell - Pink Floyd A Rush of Blood to the Head - Coldplay Parklife - Blur Power Corruption and Lies - New Order Let It Bleed - The Rolling Stones London Calling - The Clash Tubular Bells - Mike Oldfield IV - Led Zeppelin Screamadelica - Primal Scream The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars - David Bowie